I received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.
“From baby teeth to virginity, to live is to regularly suffer loss,” (LaRocca 1).
Mara is grieving after her father’s sudden death and is surprised when her cruel mother welcomes a new guest into their home who claims he will protect them. But Mara doesn’t trust the guest, and soon more and more visitors have taken refuge as their house fills up with sewage leaving Mara unsure of how to fix it all.
I adored Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and was beyond thrilled when I was given an advance copy of We Can Never Leave This Place to review and it did not disappoint. 2022 really is the year of examining generational trauma, huh? LaRocca has such a way with words and perfectly shows Mara’s pain and struggle as she suffers through her grief and the changing world around her, from that in her home and the guests her mother invites in to the dystopian landscape outside her locked front door. This is a different type of horror than Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, there are certainly grotesque moments, but We Can Never Leave This Place has a more surreal/fantasy/dark fairy-tale element that makes the story all the more horrifying. LaRocca expertly weaves the themes of complicated grief and generational trauma in it’s own horrifying ways that creates a heaviness to the novella. It’s heartbreaking to watch Mara struggle between following or attempting to break the cycle she has unwillingly found herself in.
We Can Never Leave This Place is a masterful novella that will leave reader’s unsettled and eager to explore more of LaRocca’s work.
Publication: June 24th 2022
Publisher: JournalStone
Pages: 92 pages (PDF)
Source: Eric LaRocca (Thank you so much!)
Genre: Fiction, Horror, Novella
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
A precocious young girl with an unusual imagination is sent on an odyssey into the depths of depravity. After her father dies violently, young Mara is surprised to find her mother welcoming a new guest into their home, claiming that he will protect them from the world of devastation and destruction outside their door.
Sarah O'Connor 